


The One Thing

by branwensiblings



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen, i stand corrected this is the worst thing ive ever written, no fall of beacon au, sorry general ironwood you're not an asshole but you know the kids would have thought that, thanks john mulaney, the fall of beacon doesnt happen and emerald and mercury are just attending beacon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 11:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9489851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwensiblings/pseuds/branwensiblings
Summary: Coco tells a story of her time at Beacon Academy.Inspired/ripped off from John Mulaney's "The One Thing" stand-up.





	

The storm outside may have been raging hard, but the sounds it made were drowned out by the drunken cheering and clinking of flagons that pervaded the very essence of the seedy inn. The bar wasn't packed, although there was a decent number, and most of the patrons were gathered around a single table. It was a very long table.

At the head sat the instigator of the revelry; a slender woman wearing a beret and sunglasses, looking quite out of place in such an establishment. Sat next to her was her boyfriend-slash-partner, wearing a smirk and tilting back in his chair slightly. The woman raised a hand. "Calm down now, boys. Me and Fox aren't going anywhere for a while, are we, hot stuff?" As Fox nodded in agreement, Ochre, the brawny woman they had met that night, slammed a fresh tray of drinks onto the table, passing two flagons immediately to the hunters.

"These two are on me," she grinned, "so long as you tell us a tale from your adventures."

A muscular man with very little brain, bizarrely named Squiddo, cheered at this. "YEAH, COCO! SPILL!"

Coco leant forwards in her chair and took the drink, taking a sip. Suddenly she laughed. She took another sip then laughed again. "I can do you all one better. I've got a story from Beacon."

Fox, having heard this story many times, snorted into his hand. He didn't have to be able to see to know that Coco's mouth would be split into the widest grin. The huntress settled back in her chair and observed her audience of grown thugs, all obediently waiting on her story like children. She began with the relevant context.

"Beacon was a weird fucking place, and I could tell you a bunch of stories you wouldn't believe, but this one is a personal favourite. So you remember General Ironwood? He came to Beacon as part of security for the annual Vytal Festival, and his niece-project-robot thing, Penny, came too. She was a first year when I was a second year. And General Ironwood was an asshole, and one weekend he decided to leave town, which you should never do if you're an asshole. Penny decided to throw a party at the General's house, because house parties are what all the cool kids did back then. Hooray! So everyone around Beacon heard about it, and we all got up individually and thought, 'Okay, let's go over there and destroy the place.'"

\------------

Coco walked in through the front door, giving a sideways glance to the dormant robotic suits lined up against the wall. The place was packed. It was as if everyone she had ever met was there, and they were all drinking like the apocalypse was bearing down on them. She half expected a melancholy song to break out at any moment. Naturally she followed the direction of the crowd that seemed the most drunk and ended up at the punch table. Coco grabbed a cup, followed by a can of unknown drink which she emptied into it. Instantly she felt like she was in a party scene from some movie. Red solo cup, she rolled her eyes. Now sufficiently prepared she descended the steps to the basement, just in time to see Nora from team JNPR take a flying leap and the pool table and break it in half upon impact. She wasn't sure if she was impressed or terrified, but she continued to watch as Nora stood, one foot on each broken half, and pouted down at it. "Aw, it's broken!" 

Coco was snapped back to reality as a monkey Faunus ('Sun, from team Hot 'n' Useless?' she wondered to herself) pushed past her on the stairwell and yelled out into the crowd. "SOMEONE TOOK A SHIT ON IRONWOOD'S COMPUTER. WHO AM I KIDDING, IT WAS TOTALLY ME!"

So the party was going great.

Some unknown amount of time later, Coco had reached the centre of the basement, clutching her red cup like a life preserver. It was worth noting that it had been refilled and emptied several times in the past however-many minutes, and she was starting to black out. Vaguely from behind her she heard someone say, "Something something, police." In a brilliant drunken flash of word association, Coco found her mouth suddenly yelling. "FUCK DA POLICE! FUCK DA POLICE."

And everyone else joined in.

A hundred drunk white children all yelling "Fuck da police!" with the confidence of a White Fang Lieutenant who has already been to jail, is not afraid of it any more and could easily rip the heads off the entire Atlas military. Like that, but white children.

The reason, she soon found out, why somebody had said "Something something police" was because the police had arrived. The weary looking Vale police officer descended the steps to the basement and looked out over a sea of drunk, armed toddlers yelling "Fuck da police" in his face, and for about five seconds he was almost impressed. Then, slowly, he lent into his scroll and said, "Get the paddywagon."

A girl who Coco recognised as Yang after a brief moment of drunken memory loss ("This woman is now a mother, ladies and gentlemen," Coco told her captive audience gleefully, enjoying their expressions, "she now has a baby!") grabbed a bottle from the sideboard, smashed it on the ground and yelled "SCATTER!"

Everyone ran in different directions, like the Grimm spilling out of the ground in the city centre. Coco herself ran blindly though a door that lead to the laundry room and climbed up on the washing machine and crawled through a window into the backyard and sprinted through it until she reached a big chain link fence and heard herself say out loud "I've never climbed a fence that high before!"-

And then she woke up at home. 

After some questioning of her teammates she found out that none of them knew how she got home, or even heard her come in. Not even Velvet could help her with trying to find out what happened, and she was normally the lightest sleeper.

"Sorry Coco, but I have no idea how you managed it! Or at least, managed it without seriously injuring yourself..."

"This is the last time I go to a party by myself." Coco groaned, burying her face in her hands.

 

On Monday Coco was back to normal, walking through the school entrance with her confident smirk and swagger back from its alcohol-driven vacation. She stopped, however, at the sight of Penny Polendina standing nervously in the foyer, eyes darting around. At the sight of Coco she approached her with alarming speed.

"Salutations, Coco, were you at my party on Saturday?"

"No." Coco said before she could stop herself. Y'know, like a liar.

"Things got really out of hand." Penny wrung her hands nervously, making Coco feel super fucking guilty for both lying and being partially responsible for the mess. "Someone broke the pool table. Someone defecated on General Ironwood's computer. But the worst thing is that someone stole some old, antique photographs of General Ironwood's mother, and he is not very happy about it. I think he was crying!"

It was at this moment that Coco had that thought. The thought that only black out drunks could have. The insidious, creeping, nagging feeling of 'Did I do that?'

\------------

"So did you do it?" Squiddo asked in a hushed tone, leaning forwards in anticipation. Coco waved her hand vaguely.

"I figured no, I wouldn't have done that. But I was never sure until two years later-" she was cut off by an audible wince from Ochre, clearly fearing the worst from the story. "-Relax." She reassured her.

"So two years later I'm playing video games with these kids called Emerald and Mercury who I also went to Beacon with. We've been playing for a couple of hours when Emerald says, "Hey, come here. I wanna show you something." So they both take me into their dorm room, and then they take me into a side room off of their dorm room- never a good thing to have. Finally they show me a tiny room that is covered wall to wall in stolen antique photographs from different peoples' parties over the years.

And I said, "WHY. WHY DO YOU DO THIS."

And Mercury said, "Because it's the one thing you can't replace."

That's the end of the story but how fucked is that, right?"


End file.
